Urgent... Icing / Lettering Help, Please.

I'm in a bind here and need some advice. I normally use glace icing and have had no trouble getting the detail I need...until today. I have 3 doz cookies to do w/ lettering and my icing is just running all over the place and resulting in large blobs instead of letters! I have a 4" cookie that has a company name 8 letters long that I need to pipe on the top. This makes the letters about 1/4" tall/wide. I have thickened my glace to the point where it breaks instead of stretching when I pour it into the bag (toothpaste consistency). I am using the smallest tip I own - #1. Still the G, P and R are just blobs.

At this point I'm willing to do them in royal (though I've only made royal once several months ago) if the royal will not "spread" the way the glace does. I have merangue powder so I will be using that if anyone can offer a royal recipe/proportions that they like for piping very fine detail from a #1 tip.

I've had the same issue w/ the running icing. Sometimes it's hard to find that perfect consistency. Since you're doing this for fine detail, I would recommend you filter it (the pantyhouse method). Good luck!